Beautiful Bolivia

Everything about La Paz gave me a headache – the sound of cars beeping, the colourfulness of the markets, the crazy traffic, the protesting, the drums & bells from all of the parades and of course the altitude… But I loved it! La Paz is one of the most interesting cities we’ve visited yet. There is so much culture, history and a unpredictableness that makes it such a diverse city.

After the change of arrival destination from bus station to middle of a street that we had no idea where we were, we arrived at our hostel in La Paz much later than planned. We walked around for a while in search for a restaurant/cafe/fast food place with no luck. The only place with food was a lonely elderly women cooking something at the side of the street. We asked for two of whatever she was making, without really knowing what it was, sat on a bench with her and ate our food with our fingers. It was amazing – beef with potatoes and some hot sauce. A bargain for less than £1. Street-food was the way forward.

We took another free walking tour to see the city which was starting just down the road from out hostel. I was still suffering from the altitude so we opted for the afternoon tour so I could have a rare lie in. Turns out our hostel is on the same road as the San Pedro Prison which is self ran by the inmates and only has a few guards outside (who every time we’ve seen them they’ve been on their phones or reading a paper!). The book Marching Powder is based on the prison and up until recently you could do a tour around the prison. Now there is just a guy who walks around the prison trying to con tourists into paying for him to take him round – he will either just run and take you round the prison and leave you in there! He actually came up to us to ‘chat’ – a nice guy!

The walking tour gave us a good insight into the culture here particularly around the Chaulita women who work at the markets and the people who still believe in witch craft.

We spent a lot of time walking around the markets, which have pretty much everything you’d need to buy and at the food stalls. Food at restaurants is cheap (£4-6 a meal generally) but you can spend £1 on just as good quality food from a street seller. We’ve just had to guess a little with what we’ve ordered and hope for the best but it’s working out well!

No matter what time of day it is, there is always something going on in La Paz. When we arrived it was a university dance parade that blocked the roads then for the other days there were very colourful parades in preparation for Bolivian Independence Day. We were woken at 8am by the sound of a parade going right past our hostel.

One of the best views of La Paz can be seen from the top of El Alto. You can get a gondola costing just 6 Bolivianos (about 50p) to take you to the top. A very modern gondola that was built by the Swiss. The views at the top really were incredible. We didn’t realise just how big La Paz is.

We we took a trip to Moon Valley / Valle de la Luna which is just outside of the main city and has some incredible views of the mountains on the way up. The valley itself was good, but in comparison to the views we’d seen at some on the national parks in USA wasn’t spectacular.

Sucre

After our few days in La Paz it was onto Sucre, Bolivia’s second capital. La Paz is the consitutional capital whereas Sucre is the official capital or something like that. We took an overnight bus which we were a little skeptical about as you hear some bad experiences about them. It was actually fine, not the best nights sleep we had on a bus due to overpowering air-con and a bathroom/food stop in a dodgy place at 2am!

Sucre is a world heritage site due to all the colonial buildings and must be one of the nicest looking cities in Bolivia. After dumping our bags at the hostel we walked to the main square and there was a big crowd of people and a red carpet. We stuck around to see what was going on, still not really sure who it was but quite a few important people came out to a guard of honour and cheering crowds. Whoever it was then gave their speech for Bolivia Independence Day.

We then walked around obliviously following one of the congressmen/famous Bolivians who was getting stopped every two minutes by excitable people shaking his hand. After losing the famous guy and film crew we literally ended up right in the middle of the parade. After some very funny looks (everyone else was either in costume or suited and not looking touristy) we barged our way out to a safe place to watch the parade.

Sucre was one of the nicest towns we’d visited with a good choice of bars, cafés and restaurants. We’ve become accustomed to eating street food and at the markets. Sucre had one of the best markets for food.

Sucre randomly has the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the world so we had to go check it out. The tour of Parque Cretetio starts by watching a BBC documentary, Walking with Dinosaurs! The wall containing the footprints was hit by a tectonic plate so is raised. The footprints haven’t been preserved very well and have eroded a lot but it was still pretty cool to see and think about their existence. The views (as always in Bolivia) were pretty impressive too.

Potosi

Our next stop was Potosi which is predominately a mining town and the visit to the mine was our main reason for visiting plus it was on the way to the salt flats.

We had done mine tours before but this was the only working mine we had gone into. Before entering the mine we went to the miners market to buy a gift for the miners. We bought them juice and coca leaves. Coca leaves are said to give you energy so the miners eat 2 bags a day! We tried some but didn’t really think it tasted of anything and was just like eating a leaf… Obviously!

We entered the mine and it was very narrow and even I didn’t have much room! The tour guide left us in the middle of the mine for what felt like hours to go see if his friends were working yet so we could go see what they were doing and have a chat. He finally returned but we couldn’t go up to the next level as the other group of tourists were there. Good job as it was already really hot where we were so we were quite happy for it not to get any hotter. I think it got up to 50 degrees on the higher levels. We did find our guides friends and passed them working. It was a 15 year old boy and his grandad who was 60+ – not a great environment for either of them to be working in.

We went further round the mine and joined two guys on their break. The were sat drinking ‘Bolivian whiskey’ which was 96% alcohol. We were invited to drink with them and told by our guide it was rude to say no. I pretended to drink the lethal stuff and passed it on! Kyle said it wasn’t too bad though. It was nice to have a chat with the miners, though much of the conversation wasn’t translated back to English. Our fault for not speaking Spanish! The guide was more interested in drinking with his friends really and got a bit annoyed at us for not bringing alcohol for the miners and tried to make us feel guilty that the it get group did!

Can understand why the miners (not the guide) need to drink with working in the bad conditions. The hill can collapse at any point so some day the mining here will have to come to an end. It was pretty humbling seeing people still have to work in these conditions, particularly the 15 year old boy we saw.

There’s not too much more to say on Potosi as we didn’t have much time there. We did, however, have a really nice 5 course meal for just over £2. I love Bolivian prices and the quality of food is surprisingly good.

Next up was Uyuni to start our 3 day tour of the salt flats. There’s too much to write about for this blog (and even more photos) so I’ll leave that for the next one.

After the Salt Flat tour we headed back up to La Paz on an overnight bus. This was literally the worst bus we’d been on due to unpaved roads and a crazy driver who drove stupidly fast over all the bumps causing us to literally jump out of our seats. Not a very fun 8 hours! We had a few hours to kill before our next bus to Copacabana, our last stop in Bolivia. We went to an English bar and treated ourselves to a full English breakfast – perfect!

Copacabana
After a short bus ride we arrived in Copacabana which is a little town by Lake Titicaca. Just as we were about to get off the bus and find a hostel, a guy came on and told us about a deal they would give to us at a hotel. They gave us a half price rate of £7 for a double ensuite room overlooking the lake. Absolute bargain and believe us after staying in only hostels and not having slept in two nights (or showering in 3 days) it felt like 5 star luxury! Just as we got into our room the sun was setting….

After a much needed lie in (8am) we enjoyed a decent breakfast and did a boat trip to the Isla Del Sol or Island of Sun. It took about an hour and half to reach the island then we had another hour to walk around. The small part of the island has become pretty touristy now and is mainly filled with hostels and hotels with a few of the locals houses. Not really what we were expecting but still a good experience. The main reason for our visit to Lake Titicaca is to see the floating islands which we will go to one the Peruvian side of the lake.

Salt Flat tour and Peru blog up next… Ciao for now!